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Nov. 15, 2016
I was recently informed that many students, specifically biological science majors, are frequently given the opportunity to wear gloves and dissect hearts, brains, eyes, and other organs where you gotta wear gloves to do it. I’d like to state for the record that I have never, not even once, been offered this chance while enrolled at the University of Chicago. This raises a few questions:
1. It’s not fair!!
While technically not a question, this is my immediate gut reaction to hearing about other students’ interactions with guts. STEM students get to wear goggles and hold knives in class? How come all I ever get are books? I just re-read every syllabus I’ve ever received and I swear I’ve never even held one knife in class. One time a teacher brought in cake to celebrate some famous writer’s birthday, but even then I think we cut it with a fork.
2. Is Core Bio some sort of farce?
When I took Core Biology my first year here, I thought it was the most advanced class this institution had to offer. Sometimes we got to wear lab coats and even touch microscopes. But now that I know we were denied basic scalpels and scissors and again, n, most importantly, gloves, I feel that important information, namely key details about what’s hidden inside of animals, was censored from me. I heard all sorts of yammering about cells and DNA, but I wasn’t permitted to look inside any animal at all. Did I even learn anything?
3. If we’re expected to learn a language and a little bit about art to graduate, surely we should be expected to know how to take apart all the pieces of a cow’s eye, right??
Everyone at this college won’t shut up about the core, the core, the core. Let me tell you, I took the core, and I still don’t know the first step of dissecting anything except a squid, and only because I did that four times between the ages of 9 and 15. All I know is that you need gloves. Now, I’d gladly dissect a squid again (for the part where you get to write your name with its pen and its ink sac), but I don’t know anything about eyes, brains, or any of the other “fancier” organs. In core art everyone gets to play with charcoal and gummy erasers, but unless you’re a “pre-med,” you don’t get given a scalpel. This is a double standard that I will not stand for.
In conclusion, this is fucked up. If I want to fully understand The Odyssey the way biology majors understand The Human Body, I need access to knives and gloves and Homer’s still-beating heart. If the University of Chicago truly wants to be taken seriously and move up to #1 in the U.S. News and World Report Rankings, they’ll get their act together and give me some gloves.
